Chapter 127 The locust plague threat begins to emerge; disaster victims appear on the border of the Yu Kingdom.
The king of Yu Kingdom remained unmoved, his face ashen.
Some ministers were so anxious that they wanted to run out of the hall to find someone to call a doctor.
"Halt!" the King of Yu roared. "Without my order, anyone who steps out of the hall will be executed on the spot!"
The minister, who had only run a few steps, had no choice but to grit his teeth and stop.
"Enough... enough..." The old prime minister, supported by several ministers, stammered weakly, "Our emperor... has changed. He... he wants me dead..."
"Prime Minister...Prime Minister!" Some ministers were already crying.
The old prime minister stared blankly at the magnificent beams in the main hall, "The Yu Kingdom... its fate is sealed... the root of the problem lies with the king, there is no cure... no... no hope..."
After saying this, he opened his cloudy, aged eyes and breathed his last.
Instantly, the ministers in the hall wept uncontrollably.
A complex expression flashed across the eyes of the Yu Kingdom's king, who sat high on his throne, but it quickly turned cold. He growled menacingly, "If anyone dares to obstruct my attack on the Xuan Kingdom or my revenge for the Crown Prince, this will be their fate! Guards, drag the Prime Minister out and bury him somewhere!"
Soon, several palace guards rushed in and carried the still-warm body out of the hall.
Inside the main hall, the ministers bowed their heads and wiped away tears.
Their tears were cold, but their hearts were even colder.
This was the most respected and virtuous former prime minister of the Yu Kingdom, who devoted his entire life to the country.
It can be said that without this old prime minister, the Yu Kingdom, which was originally the weakest among the states, would not have been able to exist to this day.
In the past, emperors of all dynasties listened to and followed the advice of the old prime minister.
It was he who discovered the advantage of Yu Kingdom possessing a large amount of high-quality iron ore, and it was also he who made Yu Kingdom's forging technology stand out among the nations.
That's why Yu Kingdom was able to use iron tools when other countries were still using bronze tools, and even made rapid progress in iron smelting technology.
Only the weapons and equipment of the soldiers of the Yu Kingdom can overwhelm other nations.
Otherwise, how could this tiny place possibly protect itself?
How can the people of Yu Kingdom find peace and security?
Even in his twilight years, he still thought about traveling to various countries to make comprehensive plans for the Yu Kingdom.
But unexpectedly, such a pillar of the nation has met such a tragic end. The king who once sat high on the throne has truly changed...
"Do any of you have anything else to say?" The king of Yu Kingdom looked down at his ministers and asked in a cold voice.
At the back of the crowd, a minister looked at the wooden tablet memorial he was holding, his eyes filled with conflict.
This memorial concerns an important matter concerning the eastern border region of the Yu Kingdom.
Several months ago, the Xitun Pass of Xuan Kingdom and the surrounding area suffered from severe drought. A similar situation also occurred on the eastern side of the neighboring Yu Kingdom, although it was far less severe than that of Xitun Pass, but the drought also posed a risk of locust plague.
Several local officials have reported the situation, hoping to receive support from the imperial court to resolve the potential threat before the locust plague reaches a large scale.
With the autumn harvest approaching, if a locust plague were to occur, it would certainly cause enormous damage to the Yu Kingdom.
The minister had intended to inform the emperor of the situation at today's court assembly.
From the very beginning, the emperor was talking about conscription and war preparations, and he had no chance to speak at all.
They could only wait until the emperor finished giving the order to prepare for war before submitting their report, but unexpectedly, the situation just now happened again.
"Since there is nothing more to say, you may leave." The King of Yu said, rising from his throne.
The minister gritted his teeth, ready to go all out and report the situation, but a colleague next to him quietly pressed down on his arm and shook his head at him.
The other person lowered their voice, "Stop talking, didn't you see what happened to the old prime minister?"
He forced out a few words through gritted teeth, "It concerns the people, so I have to say it."
“It’s no use,” the other person said in despair. “His Majesty won’t listen. Even if you do, he’ll only think you’re making excuses to delay his preparations for war. It won’t solve the problem; you’ll just lose your life for nothing… Give up…”
At this time, the king of Yu Kingdom had already left.
The minister, clutching the memorial, gazed at the empty throne, sighed bitterly, and stuffed the memorial back into his robes.
——
at the same time.
On the eastern border of the Yu Kingdom, in front of a border fortress, a group of emaciated villagers arrived.
The guards at the city gate blocked their way, looked them up and down, and asked, "Who are you? Where are you from?"
“Reporting to the general,” the elderly man leading the group said politely, “we are all Yu people living in a village outside the pass. I am their village chief. Our hometown has been ravaged by locusts, which have devoured all the nearly ripe crops in our village… We have no other choice but to come here to seek help…”
The guard frowned. "How many people are in your village?"
The old village chief looked back, then sighed and said, "A total of 132 people, all of them came out of the village. They traveled for the past few days... Thirty of them died along the way, leaving only 102 people."
The guard paced back and forth beside the group, pointing and saying, "You, and you, and all of you... come out."
He selected about ten young and middle-aged men.
These young and middle-aged men, though pale and emaciated, were relatively healthy among the hundred or so villagers.
"Sir, what's wrong with you...?" the old village chief asked.
The guard waved his hand and said, "The thirteen men I just called, get into the city immediately and report to the military camp!"
The old village chief quickly pressed, "Sir, you...you want to conscript them into the army?"
"Nonsense!" the guard said impatiently. "The royal city has issued an order to conscript soldiers nationwide. We're the closest border to Xuan Kingdom, and we're desperately short-handed. So hurry up and get in! Do you expect me to deliver them?"
Everyone was taken aback.
They lived in the border area between the Yu Kingdom and the Xuan Kingdom, where news was most difficult to obtain. It wasn't until they arrived here that they learned the Yu Kingdom was conscripting soldiers.
The old man turned to the thirteen villagers and said, "Go quickly... at least you'll fill your stomachs..."
They nodded, feeling both happy and apprehensive, and hesitantly walked into the city gate.
The other villagers instinctively followed suit.
"Hey? Who let you in?" the guard glared and shouted. "Anyone I didn't call out earlier, go back to where you came from! Don't expect to freeload here. We don't have that much food to waste!"
Upon hearing this, the dozen or so villagers who had just reached the city gate stopped in their tracks.
Several of them turned back, and a group of elderly, weak, women and children ran out from the villagers behind them.
They were all family to each other, and when they realized that only the breadwinner of their families could enter the city while the others were to be driven away, they refused to separate on the spot.
Seeing this, the guards quickly called for more guards, who forcibly separated the two groups of people.
For a time, cries of despair filled the air.
One man, in desperation, clutched his child and wife tightly and shouted at the guards, "If you want me to go in, you must bring my family with you! Otherwise, I won't go!"
"Hey, trying to negotiate with me?" The guard captain stepped forward, drawing his sword. "Are you looking for death?"
The man stood tall and shielded his wife and children behind him.
The captain of the guard sneered and held his sword to the man's neck.
The man's wife and children immediately knelt down and cried, "Sir, spare us! Spare us! We...we'll obey, please have mercy!"
After saying that, she cried and urged the man to go inside.
The man, however, was still hesitating.
Apart from this family, the other villagers are in similar situations.
Similarly, some couldn't bear to be separated from their wives and children, others refused to abandon their parents, and still others had no parents of their own and could only rely on their young sisters for survival, unwilling to be separated from their family...
The old village chief wiped away tears as he watched. He had a son and a daughter, but they had been killed by wolves while protecting the villagers on their way here.
The pain of separation from his blood relatives deeply wounded his heart.
He knelt on the ground, kowtowing as he said, "Please, sir, have mercy and take us all in. We, the old, weak, women, and children, may not be able to go to the battlefield, but we can still do our best to help in the city... We will absolutely not waste any food. Please, sir, give us a way to survive..."
The guards grew impatient watching the group of people pulling, tugging, and crying.
The captain of the guards' face grew increasingly grim. His eyes narrowed, and he suddenly lowered the knife he had been holding to the man's neck. "Since that's the case..."
The villagers thought he had agreed, and they all breathed a sigh of relief, kneeling down to kowtow and express their gratitude.
To everyone's surprise, the captain of the guards sneered and ordered, "Besides those who were just selected to enlist, keep a few young village women, and kill the rest—the old, the young, the disabled, and the sick!"
"Yes!" the guards responded loudly.
Before the villagers could react, the guards raised their knives.
In the blink of an eye, blood flowed like a river beneath the city gates.
The unarmed, hungry, and powerless villagers were no match for them.
In no time, they had killed so many that only about twenty people remained.
Even the oldest village chief was not spared.
"I'll fight you to the death!" a young, strong man roared as he lunged at the captain of the guards.
The captain of the guards decisively chopped off his head with a single stroke, then, holding his severed head, grinned as he looked around at the other survivors. "Don't give me a way out, you just keep looking for death. I don't mind killing you all. Now, anyone else who wants to disobey orders, come on over."
After such a shocking display of blood type, even the most heartbroken people could only meekly enter the city gates like sheep.
The captain of the guards threw down the severed head, his knife dripping with blood, and said to the other guards, “Recently, our border area has been running out of food. We don’t even have enough for ourselves. You guys clean up these corpses and make them into jerky to feed the people who come to be conscripted later.”
"yes!"
The guards didn't even blink and immediately began to deal with it.
——
And this side is closer to Linxian City.
A group of Yu Kingdom villagers, filled with extreme trepidation, slowly made their way towards the city wall at the pass.
The reason they didn't go to the border of Yu Kingdom was simply because their village was closer to Xitun Pass by comparison.
Given their circumstances, they would all surely die on their way to the border of the Yu Kingdom.
We might as well head towards Xitun Pass and try our luck.
When they saw the city walls in the distance, the villagers stopped in their tracks.
Someone asked doubtfully, "Is that really Xitun Pass? The city walls seem exceptionally tall, unlike what I've heard about it?"
The crowd discussed among themselves, "Yes, I've heard before that because this area is all barren land, neither our Yu Kingdom nor their Xuan Kingdom pays much attention to it, so the border cities on both sides are extremely simple."
"Could it be that we've gone the wrong way?"
“How could we possibly go the wrong way? If we were heading towards our border, we probably wouldn’t even be halfway there yet. So, the place ahead must be the Western Pass of Xuan Kingdom.”
"..."
Border areas are inherently isolated from news.
Moreover, in such a desolate and remote area, even if they are locals, most of them have never left the village in their entire lives.
Regarding the situation outside, they only knew rumors.
Everyone discussed it animatedly, both surprised and puzzled. Seeing how good the city wall was, they dared not go any further.
"Alright... let's all talk less and save our energy." An older man squinted, shading his eyes with his hand as he gazed into the distance. "No matter what, we're already here. It's better to go and see than to just sit here and speculate."
The group agreed that this made sense and prepared to continue their journey.
At this moment, someone worriedly said, "I met a stranger outside the village a few months ago. He said... the drought here at Xitun Pass is particularly severe, unlike where we are, where we can at least have some water. We are all from Yu Kingdom, yet we've gone to the border of Xuan Kingdom... In normal times, it wouldn't be a problem, but now the people there probably have no food or water, so they're unlikely to be willing to help us, right? They might even use us as food..."
Upon hearing this, the crowd, which was about to continue moving, stopped again.
"Why are you only telling me now?!"
"I...I just remembered too..."
"What should we do? Should we go or not?"
"We're much farther from the border of the Yu Kingdom now... We can't go back now, can we?"
"But... but if we reach Xitun Pass and are killed by the Xuan people for food... wouldn't we all die anyway?"
"this……"
"It's over...it's all over! No matter where we go, we're doomed. God is going to kill us!"
The fear among the crowd intensified, and an atmosphere of despair enveloped everyone.
The sun is now high in the sky.
The early autumn sun was still fierce, like a tiger's tongue covered in barbs, constantly licking at the people's scantily clad bodies.
They couldn't even remember how long they had traveled.
The dry rations are all gone, and there's not a drop of water left.
Under the scorching sun and amidst the panic, some people couldn't hold on any longer and collapsed, dying without even uttering a sound.
Then, several more collapsed to the ground. Although they were still breathing, they were pale and looked like they were about to give up.
Just then, several shadows flew swiftly across the sky.
Everyone heard a strange buzzing sound and instinctively looked up.
"What kind of bird is that? It flies so fast!"
"Wait a minute, what bird has four wings?"
"It seems like none of those birds' wings are flapping..."
"..."
Da da da!
A rapid sound of horses' hooves followed.
No one had time to ponder the strange bird flying overhead; everyone turned to look in the direction from which the sound of hooves came.
In the blink of an eye, more than a dozen tall horses came galloping through the air, surrounding the dozens of villagers from the Yu Kingdom.
It goes without saying that these people could only have come from the border of Xuan Kingdom.
The villagers were tense and dazed; their legs went weak, and they knelt down, kowtowing repeatedly.
Now they dare not ask for help anymore, they just hope the other party won't kill them.
"Sir...please spare my life!"
"We really...we really had no other choice. Our village was hit by a locust plague, everyone lost their harvest, and we've run out of food. We're all starving...we had no other option but to come here..."
"Please, sirs... have mercy! We... we'll leave right away..."
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